What can cause a sudden change in a narcissist’s personality?

I have found three things that suddenly change a narcissist’s personality:

  • They have new supply.

When a narcissist latches on to new supply, they engage in mirroring. They lack a stable identity because their emotional development is stunted to toddler years.

Every time they meet new supply, they start changing like a chameleon.

They change the way they dress. They change the things they like. They change their political beliefs. They change their sense of humor.

The supply could be a partner or a friend. But once they are in idealization phase, the narcissist becomes a new person. They gather new traits for their mask.

  • They are in a collapse due to loss of supply.

When a narcissist is rejected, they go into collapse. It’s when the narcissist has no choice but to confront their shame, and they feel unlovable. It reminds them of the rejection from their narcissist parent.

I’ve seen many collapses: it causes a sudden despondency. A deep depression and vulnerability. I rarely see it last more than a week, often much shorter.

It’s always utterly unsettling and fiercely intense.

The narcissist is actually most likable in this pathetic state. They seem human.

However, they’re dangerous AF in this state too. They’ll go into a rage and their revenge is wildly disproportionate.

I know one narcissist that killed himself in this state as a child, at 15, after sexually assaulting his supply and being discarded. And my dad also tried to kill himself in a collapse.

It’s a dark and dangerous mental state.

  • They sense you are doing well.

OH HELL NO?! She’s still living?!

TIME FOR A HOOVER.

Let’s see if we can FINISH HER.

At this time, the narcissist who discarded you like you were moldy cheese suddenly acts like you’re a whole gourmet meal again.

They bring on your favorite drug: the lovebomb.

And then they try to ruin your life all over again.

Who was worse and why: Hitler or Stalin?

Evil is evil- it just is. Stalin and Hitler were both horrible men, horrible leaders, and they did horrible things to their own people and others. That said, I think Hitler is the more evil of the 2.

Asking this question is kinda like asking “what’s worse dying of rabies or being lit on fire”. They both just really suck. I’m not a fan of historical antler measuring contests but regardless- it’s a common question so let’s address it.


Hitler took power in 1933 and reigned in Germany as dictator until 1945 when Germany fell. During this period of time

  1. He started the largest war in world history where some 60 million people would die
  2. He would spearhead and order the largest genocide in human history
  3. He would destroy his own nation and in the end, his final orders were for SS units to destroy the remaining German infrastructure because “the German people failed me”

Now Hitler really stands alone when it comes to horror.

During WW2 the Nazis would directly kill 35 million civilians. This is an insane number. Now, these are not people killed by accident when a factory was bombed nor are these indirect deaths from German actions. No- I mean Germans shot, gassed, tortured, and intentionally killed 35 million civilians.

  • 6 million Jews were either killed in camps by gas chambers, worked to death, or murdered by mobile killing squads. At Treblinka, entire trains full of children arrived and were gassed and killed on the spot.
  • 20 million Russian civilians were killed by Germans. In many (if not most) cases the Germans just slaughtered any civilians they found. In other cases, they besieged their cities and let them starve.
  • 2.5 million Poles were killed in camps, murdered by mobile killing squads, or shot to death.
  • 3 million Soviet POWs were killed inside German concentration cams
  • 300,000 disabled people were murdered by Nazis in their infamous T4 program.

These are just the primary crimes against humanity Hitler ordered and inspired.

In his 12 years in power 35 million died. This means that for every year that man ruled Germany, 3 million civilians died on average. These deaths were intentional, horrific, and make your blood run cold


Stalin was no angel either though.

He made his name in the communist party by committing various crimes to raise funds. He was known as a violent sociopath with little regard for human life.

When Lenin died though Stalin quickly found himself in power and from 1922 to 1953 Stalin would rule the USSR as its absolute dictator.

Stalin would cause famines, kill political enemies, and kill innocent civilians alike. He maintained power through fear, torture, brutality, and ruthlessness.

How many died under his rule though? Well this is hard to say.

Now, most of you will say “20 million” but that number is a bit tricky. First off there is no evidence for 20 million being valid. In order to get to 20 million you have to include every possible famine, wildly overestimate realistic death tolls, and stretch the truth.

The only historians to conclude “20 million” as the number are famously anti-socialist and this is important to note.

I conclude that 10,300,000 were killed due to Stalin.

  • 4 million in the Holodomor which was a famine in Ukraine.
    • Note that famine is different from genocide. It’s debated if Stalin intended for famine to occur or not. I think he likely did so I include it but there is a strong debate that he did not intend for this to happen. Intent matters- it’s the difference between murdering your room ate and accidentally killing someone in a car crash.
  • 300,000 in the Decossakization (arguably genocide)
    • Some estimates peg this number as low as 10,000 though
  • 1 million in The Great Purge
  • 200,000 in Operation Lentil
  • 50,000 in the deportation of Crimean Tatars
  • 500,000 killed in Kulak Deportations
  • 100,000 additional killed in Gulags (most are already included in the above events)
  • 4–5 million Germans were killed in WW2
    • 2.5 million civilians were killed due to war crimes
    • 1 million POWs killed
    • 600,000 killed after post-WW2 deportations
  • 150,000 Polish POWs killed

Now many of these were extremely brutal. After German atrocities in the USSR the Reds wanted revenge and brutalized the German civilian population.

Moreover, life in the USSR was terrifying for many. Stalin’s government was horrifyingly cruel and often killed at random simply to inspire fear.

My total of 10 million can be debated though. Famines are disasters and its hard to include them as intentional killings. Additionally, records are really incomplete here and while I am not on the high end- I am also far from the low-end estimates


Every year Hitler was in power 3 million people died on average

Every year Stalin was in power 300,000 people died on average.

Hitler is responsible for 3 times more killings than Stalin and he achieved this number in 1/3rd the time.

Also, Hitler intended to kill every single civilian that died– in fact, he wanted to kill many more but was thankfully stopped. With Stalin, it is not so clear. We can attribute many millions of deaths to him- but not all were intentional or desired.

Either way they were both horrible people.

Why does a psychopath win every time against a narcissist?

A narcissist deals with shame by offloading it on to other people, a psychopath deals with it by repeatedly bashing your head on the pavement.

Psychopaths have deeply internalised shame which is dealt with by violence. It isn’t that psychopaths do not register shame, but that it is only a fleeting emotion, quickly replaced by rage.

Psychopathy-related personality traits and shame management strategies in adolescents – PubMed
The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is a correlation between the amount of psychopathy-related personality traits and the type of shame management in adolescents. Two hypotheses were examined; first, that there is a positive correlation between psychopathy-related personality trai …

Psychopaths are not the cool calm robots of Quora fairy tales, they are creatures of hair trigger rage. Attempting to shame a psychopath is incredibly foolhardy, and rather than harsh words, or feigned indifference, you may be met by very real violence.

Narcissists like to appear to be at the top of the pecking order by affecting the superficialities of power, psychopaths have a system of working out who is there by raw, real world might, physical or otherwise.

Psychopaths are hierachical, like reptiles or apes – you will fight for your position and inciting shame in another is a challenge for their spot, or a refutation of the status they appear to be claiming.

A narcissist in a group of psychopaths who attempted to shame or devalue them in any way would soon receive a physical challenge to their assumed superiority. With psychopaths it’s put up or shut up. Got to pay the cost to be the boss.

As Mac Davidson says, there are no narcissists in prison.

If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate situation of being surrounded by psychopaths, be very civil and polite, do your best not to act haughty or superior as they are very sensitive to shame. Psychopaths do not care about being thought to be a good person, they only care about where they sit in the pecking order. Chances are you’re at the bottom, so act accordingly. Self depreciation is your go to here.

Beat them with brains,

Robert

The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America

The right has made irresponsible behavior a key principle.

America’s response to the coronavirus has been a lose-lose proposition.

The Trump administration and governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis insisted that there was no trade-off between economic growth and controlling the disease, and they were right — but not in the way they expected.

Premature reopening led to a surge in infections: Adjusted for population, Americans are currently dying from Covid-19 at around 15 times the rate in the European Union or Canada. Yet the “rocket ship” recovery Donald Trump promised has crashed and burned: Job growth appears to have stalled or reversed, especially in states that were most aggressive about lifting social distancing mandates, and early indications are that the U.S. economy is lagging behind the economies of major European nations.

So we’re failing dismally on both the epidemiological and the economic fronts. But why?

On the face of it, the answer is that Trump and allies were so eager to see big jobs numbers that they ignored both infection risks and the way a resurgent pandemic would undermine the economy. As I and others have said, they failed the marshmallow test, sacrificing the future because they weren’t willing to show a little patience.

And there’s surely a lot to that explanation. But it isn’t the whole story.

For one thing, people truly focused on restarting the economy should have been big supporters of measures to limit infections without hurting business — above all, getting Americans to wear face masks. Instead, Trump ridiculed those in masks as “politically correct,” while Republican governors not only refused to mandate mask-wearing, but they prevented mayors from imposing local mask rules.

Also, politicians eager to see the economy bounce back should have wanted to sustain consumer purchasing power until wages recovered. Instead, Senate Republicans ignored the looming July 31 expiration of special unemployment benefits, which means that tens of millions of workers are about to see a huge hit to their incomes, damaging the economy as a whole.

So what was going on? Were our leaders just stupid? Well, maybe. But there’s a deeper explanation of the profoundly self-destructive behavior of Trump and his allies: They were all members of America’s cult of selfishness.

You see, the modern U.S. right is committed to the proposition that greed is good, that we’re all better off when individuals engage in the untrammeled pursuit of self-interest. In their vision, unrestricted profit maximization by businesses and unregulated consumer choice is the recipe for a good society.

Support for this proposition is, if anything, more emotional than intellectual. I’ve long been struck by the intensity of right-wing anger against relatively trivial regulations, like bans on phosphates in detergent and efficiency standards for light bulbs. It’s the principle of the thing: Many on the right are enraged at any suggestion that their actions should take other people’s welfare into account.

This rage is sometimes portrayed as love of freedom. But people who insist on the right to pollute are notably unbothered by, say, federal agents tear-gassing peaceful protesters. What they call “freedom” is actually absence of responsibility.

Rational policy in a pandemic, however, is all about taking responsibility. The main reason you shouldn’t go to a bar and should wear a mask isn’t self-protection, although that’s part of it; the point is that congregating in noisy, crowded spaces or exhaling droplets into shared air puts others at risk. And that’s the kind of thing America’s right just hates, hates to hear.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if right-wingers actually make a point of behaving irresponsibly. Remember how Senator Rand Paul, who was worried that he might have Covid-19 (he did), wandered around the Senate and even used the gym while waiting for his test results?

Anger at any suggestion of social responsibility also helps explain the looming fiscal catastrophe. It’s striking how emotional many Republicans get in their opposition to the temporary rise in unemployment benefits; for example, Senator Lindsey Graham declared that these benefits would be extended “over our dead bodies.” Why such hatred?

It’s not because the benefits are making workers unwilling to take jobs. There’s no evidence that this is happening — it’s just something Republicans want to believe. And in any case, economic arguments can’t explain the rage.

Again, it’s the principle. Aiding the unemployed, even if their joblessness isn’t their own fault, is a tacit admission that lucky Americans should help their less-fortunate fellow citizens. And that’s an admission the right doesn’t want to make.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Republicans are selfish. We’d be doing much better if that were all there were to it. The point, instead, is that they’ve sacralized selfishness, hurting their own political prospects by insisting on the right to act selfishly even when it hurts others.

What the coronavirus has revealed is the power of America’s cult of selfishness. And this cult is killing us.